Wakeful Hills

“We have become more humble than the rocks,

More wakeful than the patient hills.”  Thomas Merton A Book of Hours

The morning fog flows like milk

through folded brown hills,

cream spilled on dry grass;

then the sun rises, rolling fog

into shimmering waves

before the hard hand of

simmering noon-day.

But you permit no illusion.

I see what is hidden

beneath the dark oak tree

under these dry rocks

what is given to me:

down shimmering highways

past white valleys of bone

I’ll glide till I become

the humble stone.

(30 August 2013)